Comic Book Appreciation & Commentary Blog

DC Comics to Cancel Vertigo Imprint?

According to BLEEDING COOL via it’s main man Rich Johnston (quoted and linked below), the scuttlebutt currently making the rounds is that DC Comics might be giving its Vertigo imprint the ax!

Bleeding Cool has been informed by a number of sources this morning that DC Comics is planning to shutter its Vertigo imprint. This has come as quite a surprise to some, as I also understand that DC Comics has just green-lit a number of Vertigo projects for publication. Indeed, there are plans for a big launch of new books for San Diego Comic-Con spearheading a new Vertigo… thing. But I have been told that word has come from on high rather rapidly to make the change, some contracts are being revoked, some creator-owned titles released back to their creators and some will be moved within the publisher. And those affected are being informed. (more)

And we all know how they helped expedite the demise of their once great cutting edge imprint and editorial office. It started first with the suits up the ladder at Warner Bros. getting greedy and changing the terms of their creator-owned contracts, insisting on basically a kind of co-partnership (co-ownership?) on the intellectual properties they would be publishing back in the mid-to-late aughts. Notable creators said “damn that!” went to Image and other creator-owned outlets. The rest is history (and also well-chronicled in Johnston’s article).

Over the years we’ve come to expect that when Johnston intimates “a number of sources”, there’s a good chance the rumor gets confirmed soon, so stay tuned.

Sigh. Corporations just can’t seem to help themselves sometimes in being shortsighted.